I disagree a little bit with Claude at this post, in which he references the dude who mistakenly put a bullet through his stepson when he whirled and fired at what he thought was an animal closing in behind him in the underbrush.
Claude lays the blame on the internet's emphasis on speed in draw time.
Personally, I doubt the guy's draw was very fast in the grand scheme of things. What I blame is the fact that he apparently made the decision that he was going to turn and fire...and then did so...without first gaining visual confirmation that there was something that needed shooting there in the first place.
It doesn't matter if you draw and shoot blindly in 0.99 seconds or 9.99 seconds if you don't first ascertain that there is something there that legitimately needs shooting and that you can, in fact, shoot it without inadvertently shooting something that doesn't need to be shot.
Draw speed, like a number of other skills, is one of those things that isn't usually important, except when it is.
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Sunday, August 26, 2018
Saturday, August 25, 2018
Better late than never?
So, Nikon announced their new Z-series cameras the other day.
"It's a full-frame mirrorless camera that can use the existing Nikon F-mount lens library with the use of an adapter!"
Er...okay?
I'm being a little unfair, since the Nikon adapter will allow the Z-series to communicate with existing F-mount autofocus lenses and control focus and aperture and even use the VR image stabilization functions without having to perform the translation work that occurs when using kludgy third party adapters to use Nikon AF lenses on a Sony. (Personally, I only use old manual focus lenses on "dumb" adapters.)
These look like fantastic cameras and are probably what Nikon should have released in the first place, rather than the Nikon 1 series that were designed to chase a market that doesn't exist. Instead, they wasted half a decade trying to market an interesting interchangeable lens camera to people who were happy with their cell phone cams, and let Sony get three generations into establishing itself as the de facto choice in full-frame mirrorless.
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Er...okay?
I'm being a little unfair, since the Nikon adapter will allow the Z-series to communicate with existing F-mount autofocus lenses and control focus and aperture and even use the VR image stabilization functions without having to perform the translation work that occurs when using kludgy third party adapters to use Nikon AF lenses on a Sony. (Personally, I only use old manual focus lenses on "dumb" adapters.)
These look like fantastic cameras and are probably what Nikon should have released in the first place, rather than the Nikon 1 series that were designed to chase a market that doesn't exist. Instead, they wasted half a decade trying to market an interesting interchangeable lens camera to people who were happy with their cell phone cams, and let Sony get three generations into establishing itself as the de facto choice in full-frame mirrorless.
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It's a strange modern world.
I wasn't sure if we were going to go to a ham radio swap meet thing in some far off corner of the state today or not. I was meaning to ask Bobbi, but I just read her blog and it appears that we are not.
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Friday, August 24, 2018
Overheard in the Dining Room...
RX: "Apparently Bishop Chatard* sends the short bus to sporting events. I was following a couple little buses with the Bishop Chatard logo on them the other evening."
Me: "You can't say 'Chatard' anymore, you have to say 'Chamentallychallenged'."*A local Catholic school
I've always wondered...
In the various fora and social media circles in which I run, there's a self-selecting bias toward literacy. Thoughts tend to be expressed in complete sentences with reasonably correct grammar and punctuation.
But sometimes I'll find myself looking at the posts of a Facebook friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend and I see these random aggregations of misspelled words. They have the occasional capital letter or punctuation mark thrown in, as though the writer knew they were supposed to include those, but not how or why.
And I find myself wondering "What's it like inside their head?" I mean, you'd probably be going through life slightly angry, thinking everybody was secretly laughing at you behind their hands, that there was some arcane code of keyboard use you were violating. The whole internet would be like one of those fancy restaurants with too much silverware and you never know which implement to use to eat which dish.
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But sometimes I'll find myself looking at the posts of a Facebook friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend and I see these random aggregations of misspelled words. They have the occasional capital letter or punctuation mark thrown in, as though the writer knew they were supposed to include those, but not how or why.
And I find myself wondering "What's it like inside their head?" I mean, you'd probably be going through life slightly angry, thinking everybody was secretly laughing at you behind their hands, that there was some arcane code of keyboard use you were violating. The whole internet would be like one of those fancy restaurants with too much silverware and you never know which implement to use to eat which dish.
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Thursday, August 23, 2018
#FightTheDerp
So...
Today I went out into the pistol bay at Indy Arms Company, and the first thing I saw as I set foot on the range was that the guy shooting in the lane to my left had this weird stance, with his strong-side foot dropped way back, combined with an aggressive tactical turtle crouch. And he was shooting a CZ P10.
“Oh, boy,” I thought, “This is gonna be an exotic form of f$ckery...”
And then I heard a timer beep, and he started shooting. A failure drill on his five yard target.
And it wasn’t bad.
A timer, on a public range.
And then he recovered after the string and, as he looked down to check his time, his trigger finger went into a hard register in the P10’s ejection port.
Madness! This guy’s stance is goofy, but he’s hitting stuff and actively working to get better. And he had a timer.
A timer, on a public range.
And then the guy on lane three asks his buddy on lane two “What’s a Bill Drill again? Is it five or six shots? And fifteen or twenty-one feet?”
“Hang on,” says his buddy, “Let me look that up,” and consults his cell phone with one hand and hands his friend a target printed out from Todd’s blog with the other.
And I’m like “THIS IS MADNESS. WHAT ALTERNATE UNIVERSE HAVE I WANDERED INTO?”
There were three fellow range patrons and I was the only person out there not using a timer today. And nobody was engaging in crappy gun-handling, and everybody was reliably hitting their targets, even when they were shooting at speeds that normally have me asking my fellow range patrons to please stop shooting the ceiling.
I have never before seen the like in my entire shooting career, outside of a match or a class.
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Today I went out into the pistol bay at Indy Arms Company, and the first thing I saw as I set foot on the range was that the guy shooting in the lane to my left had this weird stance, with his strong-side foot dropped way back, combined with an aggressive tactical turtle crouch. And he was shooting a CZ P10.
“Oh, boy,” I thought, “This is gonna be an exotic form of f$ckery...”
And then I heard a timer beep, and he started shooting. A failure drill on his five yard target.
And it wasn’t bad.
A timer, on a public range.
And then he recovered after the string and, as he looked down to check his time, his trigger finger went into a hard register in the P10’s ejection port.
Madness! This guy’s stance is goofy, but he’s hitting stuff and actively working to get better. And he had a timer.
A timer, on a public range.
And then the guy on lane three asks his buddy on lane two “What’s a Bill Drill again? Is it five or six shots? And fifteen or twenty-one feet?”
“Hang on,” says his buddy, “Let me look that up,” and consults his cell phone with one hand and hands his friend a target printed out from Todd’s blog with the other.
And I’m like “THIS IS MADNESS. WHAT ALTERNATE UNIVERSE HAVE I WANDERED INTO?”
There were three fellow range patrons and I was the only person out there not using a timer today. And nobody was engaging in crappy gun-handling, and everybody was reliably hitting their targets, even when they were shooting at speeds that normally have me asking my fellow range patrons to please stop shooting the ceiling.
I have never before seen the like in my entire shooting career, outside of a match or a class.
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Last shots, first shots...
I also put the first hundred rounds through the Gen5 Glock 26, which I'll be writing up for the same outlet. The G26 was my first time shooting with both hands on the pistol since the accident back in May. It's going to take a while before my support hand is contributing to the performance like it should, but at least I can keep it on the gun now.
The hundred rounds of Winchester (Winchester 124gr NATO FMJ and Ranger 124gr +P FMJ) was also fired at five yards, and trying to build up a little speed in my shooting again. The difference in shooting this 26 and the Glock 43 is like night and day. I need to try shooting some drills on the clock with both guns side-by-side.
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Wednesday, August 22, 2018
Vintage Glass...
The Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 is a classic, and since Nikon hasn't changed the basic mount, vintage manual focus lenses will fit on the newest Nikon F-mount DSLRs. (Or my Sony, with the right adapter.)
More State Fair pics...
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Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Monday, August 20, 2018
From discussion elsewhere...
I'm troubled when they refer to a "Use-of-Force Continuum". It’s not baseball, people. You can run straight to whichever base you need to. You don’t have to touch them in order.— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) August 20, 2018
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Happy Photography Day!
Hope those of you who are shutterbugs had some good times with a camera today!
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General Gripes...
- Collarbone still hurts plenty, although it's a more manageable level of pain than initially. It's still enough to make me pretty grouchy.
- Those spots on my Battleship Cove photos actually mean that I am about to learn how to clean the sensor on my Sony a7 II.
- The doctor cleared me for two-handed pistol shooting again, and said that there was no danger of re-fracture, and pain would likely be my only limiting factor. So...yay? Back to work. I'm going to consider it as rehab for my shoulder.
Took a knap.
This is some lovely rainbow obsidian from northern California that's been knapped into a broad blade about 3.75" long and affixed to an antler handle.
What caught my eye was the fat, asymmetrical antler handle that fills the fist nicely, the right hand in a forward grip and the left in a reverse. It feels kinda like a clinch pick.
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Saturday, August 18, 2018
Peak State Fair
This kid swarming up onto the tractor just made my day.— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) August 19, 2018
Peak State Fair, right there.#IndianaStateFair pic.twitter.com/UWscQRxh49
The Smallest Minority needs our help!
Please help him if you can. He's a good dude.
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1913 Avery tractor
This is usually under a tent awning in the middle of the tractor park, and is a dark object, so it's usually been tricky to shoot. In 2014 it was parked under the sky, however.
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